Quotes About Science Fiction Novels

“Now and then I am asked as to "what books a statesman should read," and my answer is, poetry and novels-including short stories under the head of novels. I don't mean that he should read only novels and modern poetry. If he cannot also enjoy the Hebrew prophets and the Greek dramatists, he should be sorry. He ought to read interesting books on history and government, and books of science and philosophy; and really good books on these subjects are as enthralling as any fiction ever written in prose or verse.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“Cities controlled by big companies are old hat in science fiction. My grandmother left a whole bookcase of old science fiction novels. The company-city subgenre always seemed to star a hero who outsmarted, overthrew, or escaped "the company." I've never seen one where the hero fought like hell to get taken in and underpaid by the company. In real life, that's the way it will be. That's the way it always is.”

— Octavia E. Butler

“Worst of all were the highly unlikely science-fiction novels, or the equally implausible futuristic tales.
Couldn't my mom and Nana Victoria see for themselves that I was both mystified and frightened by life on Earth?”

— John Irving

“Novels written by university professors and set in the groves of academe are far more rigidly predictable than anything but the most routine science fiction novel, but they have escaped the stigma of being labeled as genre.”

— John Clute

“Some people become passionate readers and fans of science fiction during childhood or adolescence. I picked up on SF somewhat later than that; my escape reading of choice during my youth was historical novels, and one of my favorite writers was Mary Renault.”

— Pamela Sargent

“There must be a dozen films now based on Philip K. Dick novels or stories, far more than any other published science fiction writer. He's sort of become the go-to guy for weird science fiction notions.”

— John Kessel

“My dad was always such a frustrated artist. He always worked very hard to support his family, doing a bunch of ridiculous jobs. He wanted to be a painter, but then he also wrote science-fiction novels in his spare time.”

— Rainn Wilson

“We've had science fiction novels where China is dominant; we've had novels where India is dominant, and I suppose it's all about getting away from that cliched old tired idea that the future belongs to the West.”

— Alastair Reynolds

“Any attempt to list the ten best science fiction novels is doomed to failure.”

— Ann Leckie

“It's a common observation that all science fiction novels say as much about the time of their composition as they do about the future. As they wrote Hard to Be a God, the Strugatsky brothers were working under considerable political pressure. Following Khrushchev's infamous visit to an exhibition of abstract art in 1962 ("dog shit" was one of his more printable responses) a wave of panicked ideological house-cleaning swept through the Soviet Union's artistic establishment. For SF writers, as Boris Strugatsky remembers, this resulted in a reminder that the only truly orthodox subject was "the collision of two worlds.”

— Arkady Strugatsky

“You know, I think some people fear that if they like the wrong kind of book, it will reflect poorly on them. It can go with genre, too. Somebody will say, "I won't read science fiction, or I won't read young adult novels"-all of those genres can become prisons. I always find it funny when the serious literary world will make a little crack in its wall and allow in one pet genre writer and crown them and say, "Well Elmore Leonard is actually a real writer." Or "Stephen King is actually a really good writer." Generally speaking, you know you're being patronized when somebody uses the word "actually”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

“During the day she would read science fiction novels. In the evenings she watched television. And she ate, and ate, and drank, and ate.”

— Fay Weldon

“I was someone who really loved fantasy novels and science fiction novels.”

— Matthew Tobin Anderson

“If there's another writer, like Ross McDonald or Raymond Chandler, and all they're writing are mysteries, they won't be accepted," he said. "And that's problematic. A lot of so-called literary novels are just not very good. They're not well-written, they're not well-thought-out. They have pyrotechnics of intelligence.
"On the other hand, some of the best writers and speculative ideas are in science-fiction. The science-fiction genre is completely, completely segregated. And these people are writing good stuff. They're writing about where you're going, which means they're talking about where you are.”

— Walter Mosley

“Cory Doctorow should be too busy for lunch. He's co-editor of, and a prolific contributor to, one of the most influential blogs in the world, Boing Boing. Over the past decade the Canadian-born writer has published 16 books, mostly science fiction novels. He campaigns vigorously on the politics of the digital age.”

— Tim Harford

“My platform has been to reach reluctant readers. And one of the best ways I found to motivate them is to connect them with reading that interests them, to expand the definition of reading to include humor, science fiction/fantasy, nonfiction, graphic novels, wordless books, audio books and comic books.”

— Jon Scieszka

“[ ... ]i'm not a leftist trying to smuggle in my evil message by the nefarious means of fantasy novels. I'm a science fiction and fantasy geek. I love this stuff. And when I write my novels, I'm not writing them to make political points. I'm writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism, and what I want to do is communicate that. But, because I come at this with a political perspective, the world that I'm creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have [ ... ] I'm trying to say I've invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too, that's fantastic. But if not, isn't this a cool monster?”

— China Miéville

“I was writing novels at eight. It was a science fiction epic, which went by the unimprovable title of 'Another Kind of Warrior.' I'd write it beginning to end, but when I'd finished it, I was another year older. The quality of writing and thought changed radically, so I'd start it again. I re-wrote that same book until I was 16.”

— Neil Cross

“In the past, it was only in science fiction novels that you could read about ordinary people being able to go to space ... But you laid the foundation for space tourism.”

— Nursultan Nazarbayev

“But I think, and hope, that the novels can be understood and enjoyed as science fiction, on their own terms.”

— Dan Simmons

“I never could read science fiction. I was just uninterested in it. And you know, I don't like to read novels where the hero just goes beyond what I think could exist. And it doesn't interest me because I'm not learning anything about something I'll actually have to deal with.”

— James D. Watson

“War has always been a part of science fiction. Even before the birth of SF as a standalone genre in 1926, speculative novels such as 'The Battle of Dorking' from 1871 showed how SF's trademark 'what if' scenarios could easily encompass warfare.”

— Paul Di Filippo

“Well, when you look at a lot of science fiction novels they're asking questions about power. There are questions about what it means to have power and what are the long-term consequences of power.”

— Junot Diaz

“Oh, I'm nerdy about science fiction and fantasy and graphic novels and reading, and I'm nerdy about board games. My favorite board game is a board game I'm working on right now. It's a game of Napoleonic era naval warfare, and it's going to be fun.”

— Billy Campbell

“Science fiction is the ugly stepchild of mainstream literature, and fantasy is the ugly stepchild of science fiction, and tie-in novels are the ugly stepchild of fantasy ... and on and on and on.”

— R.A. Salvatore

“I had bohemian parents in Seattle in the last '60s living in a houseboat. My dad wrote science fiction novels and painted big murals and oil paintings.”

— Rainn Wilson

“[I]n adult literary fiction, stories are there on sufferance. Other things are felt to be more important: technique, style, literary knowingness. Adult readers who do deal in straightforward stories find themselves sidelined into a genre such as crime or science fiction, where no one expects literary craftsmanship. But stories are vital. Stories never fail us, because, as Isaac Bashevis Singer says, "events never grow stale." There's more wisdom in a story than in volumes of philosophy. [Contemporary writers, however,] take up their stories as with a pair of tongs. They're embarrassed by them. If they could write novels without stories in them, they would. Sometimes they do.”

— Philip Pullman

“As a kid I wanted to write science fiction, and I was never without a book. Later I really got into being a scientist and never thought I'd be writing novels.”

— Daniel H. Wilson

“Notice how every science fiction movie or television show starts with a shot of the location where the story is about to occur. Movies that take place in outer space always start with a shot of stars and a starship. Movies that take place on another world always start with a shot of that planet. This is to let you know where you are. Novels and stories start the same way. You have to give the reader a sense of where he is and what's happening as quickly as possible. You don't want to start the story by confusing the reader.”

— David Gerrold

“I read anything I could get my hands on: science fiction, fantasy, horror, thrillers. I even became hooked on the Bantam reprints of the old pulp novels from thirties and forties: Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Avenger.”

— James Rollins

“I read fiction all the time. It's true that I don't like fantasy or science fiction. I like "realistic" novels, particularly those in which nothing much ever happens.”

— Gustavo Perez Firmat

“Carver's best book yet! FROM A CHANGELING STAR combines deft characterization and fascinating extrapolation into a complex, compulsively readable thriller. I wish all science fiction novels could be this good.”

— Craig Shaw Gardner

“I often use detective elements in my books. I love detective novels. But I also think science fiction and detective stories are very close and friendly genres, which shows in the books by Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Glen Cook. However, whilst even a tiny drop of science fiction may harm a detective story, a little detective element benefits science fiction. Such a strange puzzle.”

— Sergei Lukyanenko

“My advice is to write about what you are interested in. If you read science fiction and fantasy, then write in that genre. If you read romance novels, then try writing one.”

— Michael Scott

“The ratio of authentic literature to trash in pornography may be somewhat lower than the ratio of novels of genuine literary meritto the entire volume of sub-literary fiction produced for mass taste. But it is probably not lower than, for instance, that of another somewhat shady sub-genre with a few first-rate books to its credit, science fiction.”

— Susan Sontag

“The novels that get praised in the NY Review of Books aren't worth reading. Ninety-seven percent of science fiction is adolescent rubbish, but good science fiction is the best and only literature of our times.”

— Robert Anton Wilson